Old St. Paul's Cathedral eBook

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORICAL MEMORIES TO THE ACCESSION OF THE TUDORS.

The First Cathedral—­Mellitus
and his Troubles—­Erkenwald —­Theodred
“the Good”—­William
the Norman, his Epitaph —­The
Second Cathedral—­Lanfranc and Anselm
hold Councils in it—­Bishop Foliot
and Dean Diceto—­FitzOsbert—­King
John’s Evil Reign, his Vassalage—­Henry
III.’s Weak and Mischievous Reign—­The
Cardinal Legate in St. Paul’s—­Bishop
Roger “the Black”—­The
three Edwards, Importance of the Cathedral in their
Times—­Alderman Sely’s Irregularity—­Wyclif
at St. Paul’s —­Time of
the Wars of the Roses—­Marriage of
Prince Arthur.

I have already said that the buildings of the ancient
cathedral, with a special exception to be considered
hereafter, were completed before the great ecclesiastical
changes of the sixteenth century.

Our next subject will be some history of the events
which the cathedral witnessed from time to time during
its existence, and for this we have to go back to
the very beginning, to the first simple building,
whatever it was, in which the first bishop, Mellitus,
began his ministry. He founded the church in
604, and he had troubled times. The sons of his
patron, King Sebert, relapsed into paganism, indeed
they had never forsaken it, though so long as their
father lived they had abstained from heathen rites.
One day, entering the church, they saw the bishop
celebrating the Sacrament, and said, “Give us
some of that white bread which you gave our father.”
Mellitus replied that they could not receive it before
they were baptized; whereupon they furiously exclaimed
that he should not stay among them. In terror
he fled abroad, as did Justus from Rochester, and
as Laurence would have done from Canterbury, had he
not received a Divine warning. Kent soon returned
to the faith which it had abandoned; but Essex for
a while remained heathen, and when Mellitus wished
to return they refused him, and he succeeded Laurence
at Canterbury. Other bishops ministered to the
Christians as well as they could; but the authority
of the See and the services of the cathedral were
restored by Erkenwald, one of the noblest of English
prelates, son of Offa, King of East Anglia. He
founded the two great monasteries of Chertsey and Barking,
ruled the first himself, and set his sister Ethelburga
over the other. In 675 he was taken from his
abbey and consecrated fourth Bishop of London by Archbishop
Theodore, and held the See until 693. He was a
man, by universal consent, of saintly life and vast
energy. He left his mark by strengthening the
city wall and building the gate, which is called after
him Bishopsgate. Close by is the church which
bears the name of his sister, St. Ethelburga.
He converted King Sebba to the faith; but it was probably